Trio in G minor, Op.63

Just as Brahms had his Richard Mühlfeld and Mozart his Anton Stadler, Weber had his favourite clarinettist in Heinrich Bärmann. He was also an admirer of the flute virtuoso Anton Fürstenau, for whom he is though to have written an early version of the Schäfers Klage that later became the slow movement of the Flute Trio in G minor. It was probably also with Fürstenau in mind as flautist, with himself as pianist and his friend Dr Jungh as cellist, that he undertook to make that piece the slow movement of a full-length Trio for Jungh’s birthday in 1815.

Certainly, it is interesting how the melancholy siciliano character of the Schäfers Klage (“Shepherd’s Lament”) seems to influence the rest of the work. It is no less interesting that the flute consistently refuses to accept that state of mind. It supplies a comparatively light-hearted second subject to the fundamentally serious first movement, a cheerful waltz tune in response to the gruff opening of the Scherzo and, in the Finale, material that contrasts so effectively with the ominous opening theme in G minor that it eventually inspires a change of heart and a change of key to the major.